


Nightswimming

by TheSeeingStar



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24537865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeeingStar/pseuds/TheSeeingStar
Summary: Sometimes, every now and then, Rand has good dreams.Set during Book Five, The Fires of Heaven.
Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Aviendha, Rand al'Thor/Aviendha/Min Farshaw/Elayne Trakand
Kudos: 13





	Nightswimming

Shutting the door against Sulin's fussing over how little he’d eaten that day or how little sleep he was going to afford himself yet again, Rand let out a deep sigh. The Maiden's fussing was getting out of hand.

_Or maybe they’re right. Maybe you are pushing yourself too hard_.

He shrugged the thought away and began to undress for bed. It wasn’t that at all. He had no choice. So much to do, so many people to see, things to arrange, plans to make. He’d got into the habit of limiting his sleep when dreams had been all death and terror, before Asmodean had shown him how to shield them. And now, he was simply too busy to sleep for long. There wasn’t anything to do about it. Sulin, Enaila, Lamelle and Aviendha just didn’t understand.

Stripping off his shirt, his attention was drawn to her with that last thought. Aviendha was sprawled in her blankets on the pallet beside his bed, deep in sleep. Mercifully so, exhausted after training with the Wise Ones earlier in the day. Mercifully because not only could she not add another nagging voice to those of the concerned Maidens outside, but because she’d been like a boar with a bee sting all afternoon.

With her face like thunder when she’d returned to him at midday, he’d assumed her training had not gone well, and when he'd stupidly asked her about it, she'd almost bitten his head off. Since then she’d been snapping and sniping whenever he said barely three words to her, pointing out his ignorances with an acid tongue. And then there had been the lengthy rant on Elayne's ownership of him. It had been a relief when Rhuarc and Bael came to discuss a few points of clan business with him. Grim as it had been, as so many of his meetings with them seemed to be these days, it had been a blessed relief from Aviendha's sour mood.

Mercifully already in her blankets for another reason too, he thought to himself with a grimace as he removed his breeches, stockings following shortly to fall in the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. He gave her a glance as he got into bed, swiftly rolling over to his other side to face away from her. The sound of her breathing haunted him still, that slow in and out barely a pace away, but at least he couldn’t see her. At least he didn’t have to endure her undressing in the same room tonight, the painfully frustrating rustles of her shedding her clothes behind him with absolutely no shame and apparently no awareness of how teasing he found it.

Unbidden images of the night they shared in the snow came to him as soon as he closed his eyes, as they often did at night. Unwanted remembrance of how her body had felt under his, how soft her skin was over firm muscle, the noises she’d made... her breathing had certainly been a lot less relaxed then than it was now...

_Stop it!_

He unclenched the fists he hadn’t even realised he’d made and forced the thoughts from his mind. It wasn’t fair of him to think of her like that. She’d been very clear that she wanted no more of him in the cool distance she’d put between them, and her increasing insistence that he belonged to Elayne.

Embracing saidin to weave the flows that would shield his dreams, he settled into his blankets and tried to relax. It took a long time for sleep to claim him.

************

The moon sat large and low over the Waterwood, just topping the trees and easily visible through the gap in the canopy where the pond made a roughly circular clearing. The dark waters were perfectly still, not even the hint of a breeze stirring the surface, the moon giving plenty of silvery light to see by.

Rand sat with his back against the sandy bank at one end of the pool, enjoying the quiet. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, Min and Elayne appeared paddling up to their necks in the water of the pool's centre, laughing. They beckoned for him to join them, but as he was about to push off from the bank, he caught movement from the corner of his eye.

Aviendha stood naked on the bank to his right, looking unsurely at the water. Smiling, he swam over to her, holding out a hand.

"It’s fine." He said. "Come for a swim."

"It is not fine." She sniffed. "So much water in one place. And you contaminate it with your bodies, why?" She asked, not angrily, just curiously.

"Because it feels nice." He answered simply. She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him, but with only a moments hesitation, she reached out towards him all the same. Sitting on the bank in front of him, she let her toes slip into the cool water, submerging her legs warily, as though it might rise up and grab her into its depths at any moment.

Rand chuckled softly, placing his hands on her waist to slowly lift her the rest of the way in. By the time the water reached her shoulders she was wide eyed, muscles tense and breath unsteady, though she schooled her face to calm in an instant when she noticed him looking.

"I’ll teach you to swim." He said, looking down at her reassuringly.

She looked uncertain, but nodded anyway. "I trust you Rand Al'Thor."

She took to it surprisingly quickly and the next thing he knew, as though hours had passed in an instant, he was back in his place against the bank watching the three women capering happily in the water together. He thought that must have been something close to how he, and Mat, and Perrin must have looked when they learnt to swim here as boys. Not as beautiful of course, but just as happy. It had been such a carefree time.

He hadn’t known it at the time, but Emonds Field had been a paradise of sorts. There had been hardships of course, hard work, cold winters, failed crops and lean times. But it had been sheltered from so many of the troubles of the world outside. He hoped it always would be. He suspected it would not...

"Rand! Stop sitting like a goose and join in!" Elayne called with a tinkling laugh.

"Yes sheepherder, do as the Daughter Heir commands!" Min grinned, spluttering at the sudden splash it earned her from Elayne. Aviendha shook her head at them and mumbled something about Wetlanders being strange, but her eyes were tinged with undeniable fondness.

He laughed and pushed off from the sandy soil behind him, swimming out to meet them, leaving his troubles back at the bank...

************

Rand opened his eyes to the dim grey light of the approaching dawn. With the windows flung open to dispel at least some of the pressing night time heat of the lingering summer, he could just hear the quiet hum of Cairhien beginning to stir outside, the docks fully functioning again and industry restarting with the Shado threat gone.

He had turned in the night and found himself facing Aviendha, still asleep on her pallet. He frowned at the vague recollection of a dream he thought he’d had. In the midst of those that had left him starting awake in a sweat as happened every night, he was sure he’d had one more pleasant. She smiled in her sleep and he was suddenly confronted with an image of her, Min and Elayne, cavorting naked in a moonlit Waterwood pond while he swam amongst them.

His cheeks flushed hot and he all but leapt out of bed, hastily washing and dressing, struck by a sudden need to be out of the stifling room. Nothing to do with her of course, he just had a lot to do. That was all.

Channeling to warm the water in the basin for shaving, he almost cut his face open from eye to chin with the razor when he caught sight of her in the mirror, sitting up to stretch herself awake with not a stitch of clothing to cover her.

Tearing his eyes away he fingered the small nick his cheek had not escaped, wiping away a drop of blood and cursing under his breath. _You’re as bad a letch as Mat_ , he thought to himself, struggling to keep his eyes off her reflection as she dressed unhurriedly behind him.

When he was sure she was done he washed off the leftover shaving lather and donned his coat, good red wool with thread of gold scrollwork embroidered up the sleeves.

"Did you shave with your sword Rand Al'Thor?" She asked dryly, frowning at the cut on his cheek. Letting out a frustrated breath as he walked around her to pick up his sword belt and secure it around his waist, he resolved to go to the Wise Ones as soon as he could that morning to demand that Aviendha sleep elsewhere from now on. She had to go, it was the only way.

But as he left the room with her at his side, chatting idly about some upset with the Maidens trying to play Maiden's Kiss with a lower Cairhienin lordling the day before, he knew he wouldn’t visit the Wise Ones. He wouldn’t demand she sleep elsewhere for one simple, infuriating reason.

He liked her being there too much.


End file.
